Sheila Corrall and Barbara

This issue of Library Trends, on the theme of Research Into Practice, has been designed with two aims in mind. Published in 2013, it marks the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Information School (iSchool) at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom by presenting a selection of papers that demonstrate the creativity and variety of research undertaken in the field of librarianship and share a unifying concern to make links, as well as establish meaningful connections, between research and practice. The issue is dedicated to Bob Usherwood, now an emeritus professor in the school, whose work and legacy at Sheffield are distinguished by an exemplary commitment to putting research into practice, and it is especially pleasing for us to be able offer this tribute to Bob in the year when he is due to celebrate his seventieth birthday. We also believe that an issue on this theme is timely and important for our profession. There has been a strong drive lately to promote evidence-based practice in library and information work and to develop a research culture in the practitioner community, exemplified in the United Kingdom by the DREaM project, amid continuing concerns about the disconnect between the research and practitioner communities (Hall, 2011a, 2011b). The Sheffield iSchool was founded as the Postgraduate School of Librarianship in 1963. It was the second university-level school of its kind in the United Kingdom and the first to switch from the postgraduate diploma to a master’s degree, the master’s degree in librarianship (MA Librarianship), as a basic qualification for the library profession (the first library school in the United Kingdom was established at University College London in 1919, and it was not until after World War II that other schools appeared, many of them located in technical colleges and colleges of commerce) (Bramley, 1981). In 1967, an additional program, which offered the MSc in Information Studies, was introduced and the school’s name changed to the Postgraduate School of Librarianship and Information